Japanese Formula Pacific 1982

Kazuyoshi Hoshino won a second Japanese Formula Pacific title in 1982, winning seven races and leaving him with a record of ten wins in 16 races from May 1981 onwards. After starting the season in his 1981 mount, the ex-Takao Wada March 79B, Kenji Takahashi bought a new March 82A but quickly dropped that for the latest Ralt RT4/82, with which he won three races on the trot before Hoshino reasserted himself.

1982 would prove to be the final season for Formula Pacific in Japan, and a number of factors contributed to its abrupt fall. Firstly, the Ralt RT4/82 arrived, and immediately rendered all the other cars uncompetitive. Hoshino, Kenji Takahashi and Masahiro Hasemi all bought Ralts to continue their multi-formula rivalry, and poor March 81A driver Toshio Suzuki went from winning the second round to fighting just to get onto the podium. Secondly, the category was not working as a development formula, and the JAF's introduction of Formula 3 instead would work better. Thirdly, Grand Champion was taking off as a single-seater sports car category, similar to the new Can-Am in the US, and this would mop up a lot of the old F2 cars that could have bolstered the grids in Formula Pacific. To seal the category's fate, grid sizes hovered around seven or eight, only half the size of the Formula 2 grids. It was the right time to close it down.

Japanese Formula Pacific

The research

All Japanese Formula Pacific results have been compiled by Michael Ferner using the "Japan Automobile Federation" website (www.jaf.or.jp) and Tooru Kitajima's "Formula Nippon Data Center" (formerly at http://isweb34.infoseek.co.jp/motor/fndc/ but no longer online).

March, Chevron and Ralt sold a number of cars to Japan but surviving production records usually only give the name of the agent so it has been difficult to work out chassis identities. More help is needed - if you owned one of these cars or raced in the series, please get in touch.